In other news, Southern Thailand has been beset by heavy floods this week — so bad that at least five people have died as a result. The hardest hit provinces are those in the Deep South on the Malaysian border, but much of the whole of the southern part of the country has been dealing with excessively heavy rain.

Let’s see what else has been entertaining and enraging Bangkok this week…

Another tragedy stemming from wild elephants being used for human entertainment this week as famous elephant Ekasit crushed his owner to death. Ekasit has starred in a variety of films and commercials over the years.

54-year old Somsak Riengngen was attacked by the 5-tonne Ekasit, who used his trunk to crush him to death, on Monday in Chiang Mai.

36-year old Peeraphol Yodchareon was arrested in Bangkok on Thursday after he was identified from a viral assault video that saw a man’s hand grope a woman’s breast from behind as she sat on the bus. He apparently admitted to similar harassing other women on the bus on at least 20 different occasions. He was charged with indecent public assault and if convicted, could face up to 10 years in prison or a fine of 20,000 baht.

Blogs

Mark Brown visits the popular Ajarn blog this week to detail what he sees as the issues within the Thai public education system. He promises to later propose possible solutions to each issue in a later blog, and invites comments and suggestions from readers too.

The issues he raises range from the general — schools should put students first instead of the teachers — to the highly specific and actionable. The latter group includes highlights like the hot and dirty classrooms, to inappropriate teaching materials like textbooks written by English people for English people.

Teachers, parents and anyone interested in education will doubtless find this post fascinating.

Vice take a look at the barber shops in Bangkok who are shaking up the traditional dictums for Thai male appearance and creating a new style for young men in the city. They trace the trend for slick backs, pompadours and under cuts back to the emergence of Never Say Cutz — the hip chain barbershop that’s blown up in the last few years.

A really interesting piece in the New York Times on the many snakes that inhabit Bangkok. This year, the city’s Fire and Rescue department received almost 32,000 calls for help in removing snakes, which doesn’t include the many that are killed and removed by residents on their own.

The piece goes more in depth on these invading creatures and makes the point that, “snakes have always owned this corner of Thailand, and that the people of Bangkok are merely borrowing it from them.”

Forum Threads

A sobering Reddit thread here, written by a young Canadian who has just moved back home after two years of teaching in Thailand and living with his Thai girlfriend. He shares how he feels depressed now living back with his parents in Canada and not yet decided on a career path.

Revealingly, he also discusses his relationship with his girlfriend, which many Redditors inevitably latch onto. The OP says how his girlfriend has long wanted to move to Canada and start a new life there and highly encouraged him to move back to save enough money for her to move out and join him.

He talks about their rocky relationship which has come close to breaking point “many times before”, and how he feels like he might be letting her down if he decides to go down a different path after all.

A Thaivisa member asks for the collective advice of the forum on his relationship situation. Apparently his girlfriend gets bored waiting around his condo while he works so has started ‘hanging out’ with ‘a friend’ at a girly bar. Sure. Why wouldn’t she? Great spot for women to hang out at.

Apparently the girlfriend expects to be paid a salary by our fine Thaivisa member, but he has recently asked her to find a ‘normal job’ instead — and presumably to keep her away from her bar girl friends. He wants to know if he’s likely to still have a girlfriend by next week after laying down this ultimatum.

Responses are unsurprisingly almost unanimous: it might be time to start looking for a new woman.